Khloe Kardashian. Roselyn Sanchez. Pamela Anderson. Eva Mendez. Holly Madison. What do they all have in common?
Which is the animal here again?
If you answered, outta this world hotness, you’d be right. But since I am not compiling a Scoville scale on the female half of Hollywood and outlying regions (though, hmm, this isn’t a bad idea), it’d only be a part of the answer.
But if you said, they sizzled in PETA’s adventurous, “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” campaign, Bing-B0ng-Bang, got it in one. They did, and it is, and whether it works for its publicly stated purpose, it does wonders for the ladies’ careers — and the libidos of men taking advantage of the photographers’ skills and the generosity of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Win-win.
Or it would be, had PETA, described as “by far the most successful radical organization in America”, proved as considerate to its 4-legged, winged, and otherwise non-human friends — and hadn’t slaughtered 95% of adoptable pets in their care in 2008. Notwithstanding years of public outrage, PETA euthanized 2,124 pets in its Norfolk, VA headquarters — and adopted out…wait for it…7. Not thousands, not hundreds — just 7. Throughout the year.
Per the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom’s (CCF) press release based on PETA’s own disclosures to the VA Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, since 1998, the group’s dog and cat death toll reached 21,339, not counting 2009’s. Another thing to become public at this time is that despite a $32 million annual budget, PETA has made no plans to start operating as an adoption shelter or had its workers make even a nominal effort to find homes for their “charges”. Not surprising then, considering its stand, that last year, CCF petitioned Virginia’s State Veterinarian to reclassify PETA as a slaughterhouse.
Said CCF Research Director David Martosko: “PETA hasn’t slowed down its hypocritical killing machine one bit, but it keeps browbeating the rest of society with a phony ‘animal rights’ message. What about the rights of the thousands of dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens that die in PETA’s headquarters building?”
Adds Martosko: “Since killing pets is A-OK with PETA, why should anyone listen to their demands about eating meat, using lab rats for medical research, or taking children to the circus?”
This isn’t just bitterness talking. Self-described “complete press sluts” [according to its president and co-founder, Ingrid Newkirk], PETA seeks “total animal liberation” — meaning no meat or dairy; no aquariums; no circuses; no hunting or fishing; no fur or leather; and no medical research using animals. PETA is even opposed to the use of seeing-eye dogs.
Commendable purity of thought — for an organization that is nonetheless perfectly all right with distributing $70K in grants to Rodney Coronado, a convicted animal-rights arsonist, or making cash donations to the terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF), responsible, along with Animal Liberation Front (ALF), for more than 600 crimes since 1996, causing (by a very conservative FBI estimate) more than $43 million in damages. ALF’s “press office” brags that in 2002, the two groups, sometimes referred to as “black eyes”, committed “100 illegal direct actions” — like blowing up SUVs, destroying the brakes on seafood delivery trucks, and planting firebombs in restaurants.
The FBI calls ALF and ELF the nation’s “most serious domestic terrorism threat.” Bruce Friedrich, PETA’s “vegan campaign director” and third-in-command, didn’t seem to care when addressing the 1,000-strong crowd of Animal Rights activists at 2001 convention in Virginia, he said, “blowing stuff up and smashing windows” is “a great way to bring about animal liberation.”
“It would be great,” he added, “if all the fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories and the banks who fund them exploded tomorrow.”
Since then, some of them did. Nicely enough, during promotional interviews, the gorgeous girls serving as the public faces of the campaign steered very much clear of these issues.
And, perhaps, so they should have. It is said beauty will save the world. If it serves to save, at least, one cat or a dog — or a laboratory employee, as far as I am concerned, it will have served its purpose.
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April 12th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
The Center for Consumer Freedom is a front organization for a group of companies that take giant profits from hurting animals and persuading people to buy and smoke more cigarettes. Of course they clutch at any straw to paint PETA in a bad light. Open-minded people might want to read “PETA and Euthanasia” at Peta.org.
April 13th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Trevor is right. It’s disingenuous, to say the least, for the deceitfully-named Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) to complain about the number of unwanted and suffering animals whom PETA has been forced to euthanize because their guardians requested it, or because no good homes exist for them.
CCF is a front group for Philip Morris, Outback Steakhouse, KFC, cattle ranchers, and other animal exploiters who kill millions of animals every year, not out of compassion, but out of greed. CCF promotes meat-eating and defends corporations that send billions of cows, chickens, pigs, and other animals to terrifying, gruesome, and painful deaths in slaughterhouses.
PETA handled far more animals than 2,124 in 2008. In fact, we took in more than 10,000 dogs and cats, spaying and neutering all of them at low to no cost. We gave them shots, fixed their wounds and treated their illnesses, and returned them to the community. Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could hardly be called “pets,” as they had spent their lives on heavy chains, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed someone’s, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to place, and the like, and PETA offered them a release from suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians.
Those figures also do not include the hundreds upon hundreds of dogs and cats whose suffering PETA works to alleviate by providing them with free food when their owners are poor, clean water buckets, sturdy dog houses, straw for winter, and more, or the hundreds of adoptable dogs and cats we will not take in but refer to walk-in animal shelters and adoption centers. Since 2001, PETA’s low- to no-cost spay-and-neuter mobile clinics, SNIP and ABC, have sterilized more than 50,000 animals, preventing hundreds of thousands of animals from being born, neglected, abandoned, abused, or euthanized when no one wanted them. We also actively decrease the number of animals who end up in animal shelters only to be euthanized for lack of good homes by using star power to promote spaying and neutering in ads across the country.
On a national level, PETA is focusing on the root of the problem through our Animal Birth Control (ABC) campaign. The ABC campaign targets breeders, pet stores, and cat- and dog-breeding mills and in an active way through protests, PSAs, celebrity support, and investigations and puts the blame for the overpopulation crisis squarely where it belongs—with those who breed animals or allow their animals to breed. As long as animals are bred, homeless dogs and cats in animal shelters will die because there simply aren’t enough good homes for them all.
As long as animals are still be purposely bred and people aren’t spaying and neutering their companions, open-admission animal shelters and organizations like PETA must do society’s dirty work. Euthanasia is not a solution to overpopulation but rather a tragic necessity given the present crisis. PETA is proud to be a “shelter of last resort,” where animals who have no place to go or who are unwanted or suffering are welcomed with love and open arms.
You can read more about this in Ingrid Newkirk’s last blog: http://blog.peta.org/archives/2009/03/why_we_euthaniz.php
April 13th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Trevor,
I see what you’re saying regarding the CCF. But the statistic is nonetheless valid, based as it is on PETA’s own releases.
Moreover, I read through your suggested material and while I appreciate that the number of homeless animals does exceed available homes, I would think minimal effort ought to be expanded to place, at least, some of them.
Another thing to consider is, in fact, the ties to the more violent activists among PETA members. I have not found many instances of PETA upper management publicly condemning the attacks done in its name.
April 13th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Lianne,
Thank you for the thoughtful response. I really appreciate the time. However, I do fell I have to disagree on one point.
You’ve said that the animals that have been put down are those that do not have proper socialization. How, then, will you explain the work of Mr. Brandon Bond, a renowned tattoo artists and a man responsible for rehabilitating and placing in homes the fighting dogs taken off Michael Vick’s compound upon the man’s arrest. Talk about unsociable dogs, and yet, they seem to have thrived outside the reach of their former master.
That said, I would love to to talk to Ms. Ingrid — NewKirk, and I promise to faithfully report her side of the story. Would she like to get in touch with me?